Rynjin

Problem is, it's almost NEVER an alternative to DLC and other microtransactions, it's alongside. And development costs are not so high as to really require such a huge influx of cash regardless, the normal $60 pricetag is more than enough (regardless of what execs may imply, the cost to create most games has gone down over the years, not up).

It might be that I'm simultaneously lucky (I got the one Halloween skin I wanted, the McCree Helsing one) and don't really care about most of the other skins and whatnot in the game. I have pretty much everything I want skins-wise. So my anecdotal experience may be skewing my opinion of them.

Lootboxes in general are hot salty bullshit, but I think Overwatch hits the sweet spot of "The game would be better without this but it's implemented about as well as it possibly could be implemented". There's no duplicate items as far as I know, which is a big plus, and you tend to get enough gold to just buy whatever skin you want at the time. Also not a ton of grinding to get them unless you play nothing but Quick Play or Competitive.

Forgot how much I liked the Hellsing 2001 OP (the song, anyway, visuals are meh). Unfortunately it also reminded me that I used to have to consume anime by downloading individual episodes over the course of hours from stuff like Limewire. Those were dark times. I was gonna say "You missed Yu Yu Hakusho's OP" but I forgot it was '92 and not later so I skipped over it at first. That's such a good one. Rare to find a song that actually completely details the main character's emotional arc across the course of a series. Pretty solid list overall. Probably have some additions somewhere but none I can think of off the top of my head.

That's mildly interesting. Thanks for sharing. I hate that that sounds sarcastic by default in text.

Friend bought everyone a 4 pack for Depth and I've been having a blast with it. Only downside is as a result of a joke I now have Ocean Man perpetually stuck n my head while we play. So far Hammerhead and Mako are my favorite sharks, though Bull is fun too. Bull in action:

I'm kinda curious as to how this interacts with "Most damage dealt as Spy" statistics. Since Backstabs deal 6x the current health of your enemy, that could lead to some hilariously big numbers.

IT BEGINS

>Playing a TF2 update on release day. Scrubs. You guys should know better.

Praise Hale, the Bottle is good again. It feels like so long.

They basically added my Dragon's Breath Shotgun primary idea as a Flamethrower so I'm obligated to be happy about this.

Hurray. Contracts. Being fair, it looks like a huge improvement to contracts and weapon skins, but still. Give me something worth making me come back to the game before asking me to buy your lootbox generator.

Apparently not only is the update late, so is each individual day going to be.

Puzzle and Dragons is a pretty solid (if heavily RNG based in what monsters you get) match 3 game with Pokemon-like elements that can actually change your puzzle strategy to get the most damage. I enjoy it a lot. I picked up Digimon Links yesterday and I haven't quite figured out if I like it yet. It's almost like a legit RPG with Digimon, moves, and turn based combat, and the look and even animations for attacks are real good. It's just bogged down by a few UI elements and such that marry the worst parts of both mobile and browser based games that make it clunky to navigate utside of quests. I'm having fun though, we'll see if it holds my interest. The HUGE selection of Digimon is a big plus, it has a lot of the ones from the V-Pets that have never really showed up in one of the shows that I know of.

Wecome! I could have sworn you had an account already.

If this update finally implements the Pyroll I'll forgive the dev team for every bad thing they've ever done.

The visual variety is something I wont complain about. The only thing I'm worried about is potentially foliage making for weird sightline issues.

Hopefully Day 2 is better? I get that this is how TF2 updates are traditionally presented, but after all this wait a further cocktease with yet more taunts and community created content isn't starting on the right foot.

Excellent, it's finally time for the tagline I never bothered to change make sense again.

If you're incompetent, yeah. Generally you make loose, knowingly overly generous estimates with a team that hasn't worked together before. So you play your game of planning poker and determine how many user stories you have to work with and how much effort/time the team thinks each user story is going to take, then kinda round up and give yourself extra time based on that. A good 80% of the time you end up hitting your sprint goals fairly easily, and if not you adjust for the next sprint. For a team that has worked together for years already on an ongoing project, little adjustment should be needed, because they should all by now know their own limitations and that of their coworkers. That's Agile/Scrum 101 for you. If Valve uses Waterfall or something instead then they're even dumber than I already think they are, it just wouldn't work with how much their dev teams shift around. Though it would explain a hell of a lot.

Yes, you can. There are people in any company whose literal job is to estimate cost in money and time to finish a project. I particularly find it hard to believe that Valve, with its weird, open, drifter approach to assigning projects doesn't use some kind of Agile methodology in their planning, which should at least let them tell us how many sprints they think they have left before the end and translate that into days, weeks, or months.

Now would be a perfect day to drop the update. Seems more likely the TF2 team will drop the ball instead though.

Wow, somebody else who's played Armello. It's like a unicorn. I don't remember any loot boxes in Armello though, but I haven't played a whole ton of it. I remember being peeved that you have to play X number of games with various things to unlock gameplay affecting stuff, which kind galls in a board game though. @Raz: How would regulating loot boxes do "harm" exactly? The only thing it would hurt is big companies' bottom line.

The problem with it is that it contributes to Fallout 4's unceasing grind and limits freedom. Instead of being able to wander freely, you get stuck in a loop of needing 170 aluminum trays or whatever to upgrade your weapons/armor and are forced to repeatedly go back to wherever you've set your base up and interrupt play to enhance your equipment. It is INCREDIBLY tedious and adds to Fallout 4 frustrating the player at every turn by not allowing you to do half the things in the game when you want to do them. When it gets to the point that sidequests and companion quests of all things are gated behind progress in the shitty storyline it's gone too far.

Soon, I hope.