ToasterToastin'

Hot damn.
 
 

Major The Last Jedi spoilers:
 

Updates for the sake of updates.

I've opened this thread like five times because I want to read all of those juicy spoilers but I'll hate myself if I do

Holy shit Firefox 57 is so bad.
I haven't had a gag reflex this bad since the Australis rollout years ago.
 
I thought to myself "Ah I should probably update my browser since it's acting a little jank" and no sooner had I seen the new UI than I'd downgraded back to my old version.
Not only did it destroy a bunch of addons I use, but the Classic theme restorer is not only busted, but Mozilla straight up removed the APIs required to support it ( and said they won't be adding them either)
 
Time to find a new browser I guess.

(just a joke btw I don't disagree)

Because Dota 2 makes them more money.

seriously, though, can we ever go do an IRL gift exchange?

I don't know why you guys do stuff like this. Just say the discussion is dumb if you want to. Posting a bunch of meme images after serious posts just makes you look like asshats. If you don't care about the discussion then don't say anything.
 
You guys are good posters on topics you care about but you then have to become ironically detached from discussions that other people care about that you don't. Maybe I'm the only one annoyed by this. If that's true then I guess I'll shut up.

Honestly the demo (NOT A BETA) of Destiny 2 was enough for me. It just wasn't interesting.

Started work as a temporary administrator around 3 1/2 weeks ago, and although I've been hearing rumblings about it for the past week or so I've had it confirmed today that they want to take me on as a permanent contract and give me a promotion into a different team that they'll be starting in the new year as a data analyst. 

In the rare times that I'm driving, it sucks when I feel like putting on music but feel too uncomfortable to play music from my phone. The cars I have access to only have CD support and most of all I feel weird whenever I actually do play something because I'm so self-concious about my tastes in stuff and playing stuff in the car feels public enough to be weird.

PC Gamer posted an article today where Mike Morheim (the CEO of Blizzard) said he doesn't think that Overwatch deserves the criticism for its Loot Boxes. People in the comments were arguing that it's not a problem because the stuff in lootboxes has A. No tangiable value and B. Doesn't affect gameplay. I understand that Overwatch definitely isn't the worst offender, but I don't know how people can mindlessly defend the random distribution of items for real life currency. Like christ, I understand if the Lootboxes are an option for getting stuff, but when you can't buy the item you want directly and have to either grind for levels, or spend money and THEN randomly get the item you want from a box I think there's a real problem.

Did anyone expected anything else from EA?

An update to the whole "Star Card Loot Box" thing.
 
While I'd love to give credit where it's due, it's EA, so that's just not possible. In fact, I read this "resolution" as more the original intention - it's still slightly P2W, just less so than originally. I wouldn't be surprised if EA just ramped it up to absurdity, knowing full well they'd be called on it, so their "less extreme" version would be regarded as a godsend and the best thing to happen to gaming since the last best thing. Any other company (though maybe not, since I'd fully expect Activision to pull the same stunt) and I'd regard it positively, but, well, EA.
 
Conspiracy aside, though, this actually makes me interested in the game again, so I guess it worked.

There's no Scream Fortress 9 update page so I made it one.

Been working on this tonight. If not for the Dremel being a bit too loud to run at 1 AM, I'd be finishing it tonight - and it's a lot of fun.

Most good 8 bit and 16 bit games are designed in such a way that they naturally teach you how to play the game without explicitly telling you how to.  Usually to teach you how to get past an obstacle they'll put you into a situation where it's simple to get past, but where you can't proceed until you've done it, and then later on the same obstacle will be used in more complicated settings, now that you know how it works.
 
Mario 1-1 has several good examples of this, and since everyone knows it, it's the best way to explain what I mean.  The first teaching moment is the very first goomba.  You're small, and he's right in front of you.  If you don't jump you'll just die and not be able to do anything whatsoever.  If you mess around with the buttons (and there's really only two that could do something here) you're going to hit jump and realize that you need to jump to get out of the way.  On top of this, the first coin block is positioned so that you'll likely hit it during your jump, which teaches you that hitting blocks also is a good idea.  Later on we have a great example of this sort of thing with the a set of staircase blocks with ground in the middle, immediately followed by another set of staircase blocks with a pit in the middle.  If you screw up your platforming on the first set of blocks, no big deal, you're just mildly inconvenienced.  But you learn that you need to be careful in such situations and therefore are ready for getting over the dangerous pit that comes next.  These all teach you very basic lessons, but if you had never played a platformer before (and the audience for the game largely hadn't) you do have to learn these things.
 
What's interesting about Carnival Night Act 2 is that it is almost the exact opposite of this sort of approach.  To get past the spinning barrel you must control it by pressing up and down.  But you've never had to do that before, nor have you had to press up or down at any point in the game before (and I don't think that you have to afterwards for that matter).  Now if this was the first time that you encountered a barrel you might try pressing up and down anyway by random experimentation, it's not like there's much else to do in that room.  Unfortunately you have seen spinning barrels before, and they've always served as platforms.  Thus you go into the room thinking "this is something that I should jump on."  To make matters worse it's just almost possible to bring the barrel down far enough through jumping to get past it (and apparently it is possible with two people) which reinforces the idea in the player's mind that jumping is the way to go.  Worse still, the room is thin and has a high ceiling, thus naturally encouraging you to jump.
 
If they really wanted you to learn to press up and down they should have made it so that the platform didn't descend when you jumped on it, but only when you pressed up or down, and/or made the room have a short enough ceiling that you could barely jump.  Additionally, that should have been the first time that you saw one of those barrels.  Really though they just should have taken that section out entirely, since learning the skill was frustrating even if you did figure it out (due to the up and down momentum of the barrel) and added nothing to the game past that point.

something something blown motivator

Should default to green to be honest. 

ITT: People remember TF2, subsequently remember their bitter memories of TF2

I'm glad they care enough to give us a blog post at least.