A 1970 Corvette

SPUFers fought to kill the ETF2L heavy, but the maintenance engineer heralded the end of SPUF itself, so I feel like that establishes a clear power ranking

Who would win in a fight (SPUF edition):

ETF2L Heavy or Forum Maintenance Engineer?

1 minute ago, TheOnlyGuyEver said:

Will it include an arachnophobia filter?

save on art costs by enabling the filter by default so that entire route just has a black screen 

Currently weighing if I can figure out what was going on in my previous subnautica playthrough. I kind of wish there was a big GO HERE DO THIS IDIOT for people like me. Actually I think they do exist via the life pod beacons but I can't tell which ones I've already checked and which ones aren't? Either way I have like 11 hours on the save and I think that might be a bit too much to just restart the run 

14 minutes ago, Moby said:

I had a crazy idea for a game, anyone that knows designing, programing and has money? I am the ideas guy.

I wanna supply subpar anime art for an indie game some day, but it would have the issue of the game becoming unplayable since I wouldn't want to stare at my own art for the time it takes to play through a game

I feel like my movie video game trauma is still in the past because despite hearing good enough things about the RoboCop games I still was hesitant about them. I might hafta give them a try.

I already was planning on getting Brazilian Drug Dealer 3 though, with a title like that one you know you're in for a good time

But what about the ranking of "how important the fox angle was to the purchase of the game?"

Perhaps this is out of left field for someone who often professes their hate for fandoms as a whole but I really do wish we still got forums for things. I understand why we don't have them anymore and how we got to this point but I still wish they existed. They usually created interesting microcosms as the people who posted there slowly drifted away from staying on topic due to there only being so much to discuss... As we all have observed in the past, obviously.

Though to speak to the concept of "in world" documents and games, man I am glad I was around back when game booklets were a thing and usually always had some kind of fun lore to read about. Kind of unrelated to the greater internet thing but that concept of reading stuff related to fiction that comes from "outside" the main medium (in this case a real world booklet for a video game) is so fucking cool. It's honestly probably why I've gotten into a lot of multimedia franchises along the general musical-band-idol axis because you get a lot of different angles to experience the content between TV adaptions and real music releases and live shows and game stories and radio segments and such.

What the fuck, one of the first things on the internet I ever saw was the fatkins diet animation. Despite the dated nature of the video as a whole the delivery of "I can't eat that, it has carbs!" still pops into my head often enough.

My mind definitely filed all of that away as the type of "show" that died once it became too much work to keep updating their website in the early 2010s though, exactly as you said. Interesting to see that it did not.

1 minute ago, Raison d'être said:

Spent 3 years cooking up that banger

There was probably a span of fifteen seconds between me thinking of that joke and then trying to think of a place to send it before remembering we had a terrible joke thread, thank you terrible joke thread for giving me a place to put this random thought I had

I bet if there was a Mario horror game there'd be too many jumpscares

I mainly play stuff made once the reign of CRTs was already over (or about to be over at least) so I kind of just had an averse reaction to CRT filters in general but I guess they make more sense for stuff like that. I will now mentally move the CRT filter away from the "literally violence against the user and for some reason always on by default" category where motion blur resides and into the "in a small number of situations it can be useful" category of graphics effects.

Still don't get why Balatro has it though. This might be a "person who's lived in Vegas all their life" kind of thing, but that filter mentally reminded me of the old CRT displays of video gambling machines that were set up absolutely everywhere and only really started disappearing for more modern displays once I was an adult. The issue is that unlike those old gambling programs, Balatro's UI actually is well designed and looks good. So I always felt like the effect being there and on by default kind of was to the detriment of the overall smoothness of the UI.

Actually as an aside, a lot of gambling programs seemingly have not updated their UI even though they're being ran on sharp widescreen flat panel monitors. It's really funny seeing the extremely shitty, probably designed-in-the-90's programs put alongside newer ones on the same boxes. Ain't no way the gambling companies are going to alienate their old retired gamblers by revamping the blackjack game's UI, they know they'll drop them in a heartbeat and use a different machine even if a UI revamp was an objective upgrade.

3 hours ago, TheOnlyGuyEver said:

I guess I could probably could be a lot better right now if I actually bothered to study! But I dunno, I've always drawn for fun, and studying away grinding out constructions and practice poses every day doesn't appeal to me. The way I see it, every drawing of mine is practice.

Yeah I feel the same, I would never practice as much as I do if I wasn't just drawing stuff that I found fun anyway so I try to keep that in mind when thinking about how much "real" practice I could have done looking back

every time I wonder where the fuck the team is and then my death spectator cam goes to some idiot fiddling with some stupid eye candy map feature I die a little inside

this is a fallacy because these people that play the carnival game on Pier would not be any use if they were actually trying to play, but it doesn't help that it's such an easy thing to notice at the same time

The timing/set up for the heart and space segments got me.

Was the Conan one just a reference to Detective Conan? I love the structure of the joke there but I definitely missed the content of it

38 minutes ago, Rynjin said:

Don't you understand? Doom Guy is the COOLEST guy! So cool we can't even call him Doom Guy anymore. He's the DOOM SLAYER. Isn't that metal as hell?

 

[20 minutes of rambling about how cool Doom Slayer is later]

 

And that's why you should care.

having not played eternal yet, this is the exact experience I've got whenever doomguy "lore" comes up in a discussion

at least some people liked it all and they are very vocal about it

 every now and then I find these type of remixes and they always frustrate me because they usually NAIL one part, but some other parts usually reaally don't work at the same time. The chorus for this is good and the second chorus is really good but the intro and bridge aren't really there.  I suppose that's to be expected for an intentionally limited medium, but it always makes me wonder if it's just the arrangement they used or something that just won't really work at all.

It is sad though because the bridge is really cool in the original. I guess even if the notes were closer to what I wanted, the lack of the lyrics would still be working against it

52 minutes ago, Moby said:

But can I play as currently marketable sub-celebrity or random pop culture using a bright pink dildo gun with weed stickers I got from spending $300 on rotating shop/lootboxes?

Honestly I don't think Battlefield games go quite as hard on that as the Call of Duty ones do, I get the feeling they'll mainly make edgy skull-pattern ballistic masks and punisher tattoo types for the expensive cosmetics look. Luckily the cosmetics and customization are NOT part of the beta... Which might actually be the appeal of playing betas nowadays other than them usually being free. Everyone actually just looks like a grunt in a ground war and doesn't have Flecktarn-patterned fatigues while fighting in a desert city in 2025.

BF6 beta is pretty basic. Not bad for free but I'd not be caught dead paying 70 bucks or whatever games cost now for it. The biggest impression it's left on me is just wishing they didn't even make it and just organized BF4 play/return events instead, but that's not how the industry or greater FPS-playing community works. Unfortunately

30 minutes ago, John Caveson said:

As for maps? Yeah, I think we have enough maps bloating the file-size now. Feels like everyone is trying either one-up each other with v-script after VSH and ZI got added with the holiday maps, or try and topple the Payload Dual Monarchy of Upward and Badwater on the regular rotation and failing miserably. I mean if you're going to continue adding maps, add maps for neglected gamemodes, like Payload Race, CTF, Medieval Mode. I wanna see a decent crack at Territorial Control, even. See if the gamemode is the problem or just Hydro. Now not only is the base install of the game bigger, the queue times for Casual are longer because of all the Fortnite maps you have to checkmark for. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing and these phoned-in updates are proof of that.

CTF and to a lesser extent PLR are unfortunately tainted by fr*endly players or at the very least some kind of insipid brainworm that makes people think that you should never actually try to play the map as intended. The new maps involved a CTF map, and while it's complete dogshit, we were getting non-lobbies on day one, if not HOUR one of the update. People apparently log in, see CTF and think "oh this is that trade server gamemode!!" It happens with PLR too but not as much. Banana Bay at least has normal games broken up by people begging for someone to help them with their contracts. I've said it before that I think there maybe could be actually fun to play CTF maps if anyone fucking played the mode.

I don't blame mapmakers for continuously trying to push gimmicks because that's the kind of stuff that Valve puts in the game. I'm convinced that they noclip through the map a bit, look at the community page, and if they see something that makes them chuckle they pipeline it to an update. The cart building gimmick for citadel (aka pl_dropstab) is completely pointless and the water gameplay in Aquarius literally just means you should have seven heavies for the first two caps while some classes like Pyro and Spy are extremely hamstringed.

Despite saying that I do blame mapmakers if their map idea sucks, like Demolition does.

30 minutes ago, John Caveson said:

All that being said, halving the post-game vote time is definitely a step in the right direction. And I'm sure most people would be satisfied with some simple changes. Bring back the missing voting options: Team Scramble (or even make it automatic when one side is stomped in a round), Extend Map (very useful for meme maps like 2Fort, DeGroot Keep, and Hightower, where people will just vote for the same map again anyway post-match), and Next Level (as a manual alternative to the post-match vote). Even something as simple as upping the round limits would help dramatically. Make symmetrical modes best of 5 or even 7, instead of best of three. And on the asymmetrical modes, give each team two chances as RED and BLU instead of one swap. Because the main issue facing Casual (other than bots) is that you're stuck more waiting to the play the video game, instead of playing the video game. And even when you do get into a match, it's over before you know it and the map vote starts, which is more waiting, then the ready-up phase, more waiting, then the final 10 second pre-start, and then  the match begins and you can play. There's a reason why Payload is the most popular gamemode, because of how PL works, it lasts the longest other than de facto DM maps like 2Fort and Hightower.

I agree there needs to be more downtime cut from the game but I think speed boosts for RED and setup time cuts would be a good step. I don't really know if I'd want casual maps to go longer than they are but that's extremely dependent on the map. You couldn't fucking PAY me to do defense and offense twice for Thundermountain or Citadel, but short AD maps like Fortezza feel like they go over too quickly. I'd say KOTH generally feels fine as is except for boardwalk which has a longer timer and I feel it every time.

31 minutes ago, Razputin said:

Generally I am quite content with TF2's end-of-life balance but if I stare to hard the cracks start to show.

yeah I wish I could turn off my armchair forum game designer brain because I constantly overthink "weapon tweaks that would totally fix X" 

Like there are plenty of things that are baaasically fine, but I still feel like could use juuuuust a little change, and then I end up wasting an entire night mentally outlining a complete class rework

Admittedly, I picked up the game near the tail end of the block structure with RTR-Theros-Khans so maybe it was all so fresh and new to me and others were getting sick of it. But it didn't seem that way to me from the player side. People will always cite shit that wotc themselves had said about how the second sets never sold or the third sets were always OP as justification for abolishment of blocks but I didn't see much hate for the structure from the player side. It at least let the ideas breathe so people could absorb what the hell was going on, that's kind of where I'm coming from when I say I don't have any chance to parse flavor anymore since it's all just in a one-set vacuum that will be gone in two weeks.

I can tell you that in a block structure we wouldn't have a Standard format featuring Vehicles, Mounts, and Stations all at once with varying degrees of interoperability between them all their support because they'd have been in the same block and there would have been some kind of attempt to keep the theming together. But then again Standard isn't even Standard anymore with how long the rotation window is, it's basically Pioneer 2. And fuck vehicles too, I've hated vehicles since they first came out. They're a complete failure in gameplay and flavor but for some reason they just want them to work so badly.

I kind of hate the cyclical arguments I've seen of "you don't like current magic storytelling, you must prefer crossover ip SLOP" followed by "don't like crossover IP stuff? you must like nu-magic SLOP storytelling!!" it's like bitch they both suck I just want them to take their time and actually build a fucking world without having to crunch half the cards into "story spotlights" and literally who legendaries

I think at this point my brain just glosses over anything that's not the rules text. It could be good or it could be bad but there's not enough space to fit anything else at this point, and I think it's by design at this point since you have like two weeks between spoiler seasons nowadays.

Though with how on rails draft environments are nowadays I can barely read the rules text too. It feels like for the last two years they've had 15 "archetypes" they rotate through and they think shifting the colors on an existing one counts as an entirely new gameplay mechanic.

6 hours ago, Razputin said:

My "main" loadout for Pyro is Stock - Scorch Shot - Powerjack. TF2's weapon swap speed is already quite fast and I feel that the extra airblast cost and crippled afterburn hurt a lot so I rarely ever use the degreaser. Meanwhile Scorch Shot is just the best secondary by far with its splash burn, stun bounce and comparable damage to Flare Gun on a direct hit. It's a common complaint that the Scorch Shot is spammable but honestly it outranking the other secondaries by so much bothers me much more, every time I equip something else I feel like I'm nerfing myself

I basically agree, it's just that I see specifically deg-scorch when almost every other flamethrower works better with it (because every flamethrower works better period than the Deg lol). It's a mystery to me.

I've completely gotten over the idea of optimizing Pyro loadouts mainly because Valve's vision for Pyro clearly wanted the "general" loadout for Pyro to be Stock/Scorch/Powerjack with audibles into Phlog being the most common change and that's the most fucking mind numbingly boring loadout you could construct where you just be a drain on enemy resources and the closest thing to a flashy or skilled play you can do is reflect your opponent's direct hit rocket into their pocket medic. Well, that AND that Pyro is kind of rarely the "right" pick to begin with so I'm usually playing it because I want to use something in particular

I'd rather play Deg/Flare and try to get funny flarepunches even if Valve basically just made rolling into the enemy with the FT equally as effective in most cases. Or the Dragon's Fury which is juuuust unreliable enough that nobody wants to use it. Or Backburner/Thermal Thruster.

6 hours ago, Razputin said:

Also just straight up revert the Axtinguisher to full crit and it would still be way worse than the Powerjack

You could bring the entire old combo pyro back and it wouldn't do jack shit. I fucking hate the powerjack honestly, it's stupidly centralizing and boring as fuck at the same time. I miss the old gas jockey set so much.

As an aside to removing gas jockey and what they did to the Deg I also still don't understand why we gave everyone faster switch speed to begin with? Who was clamoring for that change?

1 hour ago, hugthebed2 said:

Also my main pyro loadout lately has been backburner thermal thruster backscratcher. If the enemy team or map isn't suited for it, I just run stock panic attack and a filler melee (homewrecker/hot hand/third degree)

all the thermal thruster haters* just need to learn you can use the magical loadout bind when it's not good and wait for a situation where it will be good again, which is the fix for a lot of other items in TF2 that are situationally powerful as fuck like the scottish resistance

*I don't think it's perfect but it's hardly unusable like a lot of sentiment I've seen out there seems to imply

6 hours ago, Razputin said:

The summer update hit and yet again I see so many posts of people complaining that it is not a ''real'' update and asking when we will get new weapons. 

 

Never, man, it's over, it's been over for years now. And that's fine!

it's definitely a lack of experience issue (not just with TF2 but with games in general perhaps) and maybe a bit of nu-gamer zeitgeist where games have to be getting big updates or they are "dead" and no in between state can possibly exist. Not to be a Ross Scott here but when people expect online games to die within like two years of launch it makes them hard to imagine a game staying the same for a decade I guess. I don't like everything about TF2 but you just have to accept stuff as it is at this point

6 hours ago, Razputin said:

(I could go without the halloween ones though)

based

i don't understand the scorch shot degreaser loadout despite it being somewhat common

Like what's the goal of the loadout? To cover up the bad afterburn by just scorch shotting enemies? If you wanted good afterburn wouldn't you just use stock? It can't be because the Deg synergizes with the Scorch Shot best because Phlog and Dragon's Fury both synergize with it more. Is it because you want airblasts (something the aforementioned two weapons suck at) but can't unequip the scorch shot? It can't be that because stock is better at airblasting. It can't be because of scorch shot's flexibility because the Det is more flexible since its way better at mobility and does almost the same thing as the scorch shot elsewhere. If your purpose is to give the enemy medics more healing by being a passive annoyance why not just equip the phlog and get stupidly rewarded for being passive?

I might just be stuck in my own ways though because I don't see a point to using the Degreaser at all unless you're using Flares or Shotgun, and even for shotgun pyro panic attack + stock does the same thing but has more damage across the board, so like what does it do?

This goes beyond me despising the scorch shot, I just so often run into a pyro using the loadout and they just can't output damage. Especially if they airblast and hit you with the scorch shot its like "wow you really dealt like 60 damage to me that's crazy bro"

god help me this season has way too much stuff yet I can't seem to find a good reason to drop anything

I especially love City right now